I don't think that's a good comparison at all. It's more like convincing the hostile, neighbouring civilization to invade your enemy's capital while plotting to take over the provinces and assuming that they won't come and clobber you while you're at it. Mengsk was playing with fire. They had no idea what the Zerg were or what they were capable of, and got burned as a result. I think Kerrigan was the first to realize just how dangerous those things were long before anyone else did.

It's clear Mengsk regarded the Zergs as nothing more than a Confederate's bioweapon. Still, he willingly decided to cut short to what would have been a long and costly conflict by using the Emitters, kinda like how the Europeans used smallpox to put an end to Pontiac's revolt. The "good" thing about the Zergs is that the Emitters do lure them to a specific point.

Again, that's a poor analogy. While you've pretty much nailed Mengsk's view of the Zerg, you're missing the fact that you really cannot compare a highly intelligent alien collective to an early attempt at biological warfare. It doesn't even help that Psi Emitters don't even work as advertised: we're not dealing with flies to honey here, we're dealing with "hey look! That signal is *exactly* what we're looking for. Let's check it out!". At which point, the Zerg invade your planet and take it over while scouring the entire thing for that really powerful Terran Psychic they just detected who doesn't actually exist.

johnnythewolf wrote:

New Gettysburg was always intended to be on the surface of Tarsonis, not in orbit. So it's not actually retcon. There's also a cut Terran mission (the original version of "The Big Push", actually) that also took place in New Gettysburg and is Badlands.

Yeah, I knew about it already. The fact remains Blizzard chose to set the battle in space for some reason.

Except the battle was never in space. They likely chose it because 1) the other Tarsonis missions were on Space Platform Terrain (The Big Push, and The Hammer Falls) and they felt it'd tie that series of missions together better and 2) They wanted a more "urban" environment than what Badlands provided or 3) They were sick of badlands terrain since the rest of the campaign used that terrain type.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Tassadar had chosen to engage the Zerg directly in an effort to save Terrans, which ended up getting him relieved of his command by the Conclave (Protoss doctrine for dealing with the Zerg was "burn infested worlds. Spare no one."). That's why The Executor was appointed to replace Tassadar at the beginning of the Protoss campaign.

Chau Sara, Mar Sara and Antiga were all sparsely populated border worlds, and the Zerg had basically overrun the planets by the time he arrived. Tarsonis was the most heavily populated Terran world in the sector and still fighting. It was a different kettle of fish.

Good point, but that doesn't explain why Kerrigan "felt" the Protoss were here to destroy the planet.

Perhaps the Protoss originally intended to destroy the planet, but Tassadar changed his mind after witnessing the SoK's resistance?

Honestly, I'm going to go with Kerrigan just making excuses to Jim. Mengsk ordered her down there to keep the Protoss away from the Zerg and she wasn't about to disobey his orders. She knew Jim was having second thoughts about this whole Sons of Korhal business and she wanted to make him feel better about what she was doing. Like you said, there was no time to argue, so she just made up an excuse on why she needed to put her life on the line for a madman to satisfy Jim.

johnnythewolf wrote:

I wouldn't call her subordinate, she wasn't a blind follower, but she was a very loyal person. You earned her loyalty, and she'd stick with you through thick and thin. Mengsk hadn't quite hit his point of no return (that was his "I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me!" speech), but the writing was on the wall by that point, Kerrigan just didn't want to believe it.

That's because Mengsk double-crossed her before she had the chance to directly confront him about the matter. As I said, there was no time to argue, as the Protoss had just shown up.

Eh, Mengsk would have made up some sort of an excuse about how "it had to be done" and "this was the only way" and "they would have done the same to us" and she would have believed him.

Read her comments at the end of the mission. She's not a happy camper about what she did there at all. She did it for purely strategic reasons, not because she wanted to.

It is done, Cerebrate. They've all been destroyed. Let us return to Tarsonis to rest. For the first time since my transfiguration I am wearied of the slaughter.

She sounded more bored than remorseful, honestly. If she were really that concerned by strategic reasons, she would have NOT spared Mengsk (hell, she wouldn't have bothered rescuing him at all) nor would she have let Raynor go AGAIN. Duke and Fenix were hardly a threat to her.[/quote]

Exactly. So why didn't she kill the ones who actually mattered? Oh, right. Because she cared about them on some level or another because she was still Sarah Kerrigan! Her strategic goal was to weaken her enemies, it was something she had to while she had the chance, as Duran pointed out. But she didn't even hit them were it would hurt the most (taking down Jim and Mengsk and effectively ending the Dominion and any chance of the Terrans remaining a united force). She just focused on were it would hurt a lot. Curious, huh?

johnnythewolf wrote:

Eh, if you've got hope, you'll always believe that there's always a chance. If Blizzard had planned to redeem her at that point, they wouldn't have had Jim promise to be the one to kill her (that's making a promise to the audience! Most of who at that point want that! You don't break those. They are sacred!). SC2 clearly showed Jim seeing Kerrigan and Infested Kerrigan as two different people, while SC1 Jim seemed to blur them together.

Don't you tell me you were really expecting a climactic showdown between Jim and Kerrigan at some point?

Yep. That's what Blizzard promised right there and later on with the conflict between Kerrigan and Zeratul. Between Jim and Zeratul, Kerrigan was on a path for having some sort of a climactic final showdown with the two of them at some point.

johnnythewolf wrote:Besides, Raynor's promise was made out of shock and sheer anger. Kerrigan even made fun of him by pointing out that he didn't actually have what it takes to kill her. Judging by WoL's beginning, Jimmy seems to have realized she was right. He had really no reason to believe there was hope to redeem her until Valerian showed up.

Between developing Terran technology and Protoss technology, I'm pretty sure there would be some sort of reason to hold on to hope. If he really, truely believed that uninfesting her would bring her back to "normal" in Brood War, he'd have reacted differently. To Jim at that time, Kerrigan was still Kerrigan, she'd just embraced the darker side of her personality and there was nothing he could do about it.

johnnythewolf wrote:And of course, Jimmy regards Kerrigan and the QoB as two different people, because that's what they are, personality wise; as I previously said, human Kerrigan was humble and altruistic, while the QoB was just a mean, mean psychopath! In BW, he joined forces with her because she made him believe she was still the old Sarah, on whom he had a crush... and still have, it seems.

Just because your former girlfriend has turned into an evil alien queen doesn't mean that you can't have lingering feelings for her.

Again, you don't see Kerrigan and Infested Kerrigan being treated as two different people until Wing of Liberty. That's a new development.

johnnythewolf wrote:

A retcon is a shortening of "Retroactive continuity". It's pretty much going back and saying: "hey! When you *thought* this happened, this is what really happened!". It can occur on varying levels from "The Never Before Seen, Lost, Untold tale of Jim and Raynor's Raiders!".

*That* is a retcon?

Then, in that case, pretty much everything introduced in Brood War is a retcon: Duran, the UED, Shakuras, Braxis, Artanis being The Executor, and so on.

Artanis being The Executor is an SC2 retcon, not Brood War, Johnny. The Executor was still the Player Character from Episode III at the time. Duran, the UED, Shakuras, and Braxis were new developments in areas that were not previously explored (we really didn't know much about what the Dark Templar were up to after their exile from Auir, and the UPL plot cuts off after the Terrans are exiled from Earth). There's a difference between worldbuilding and retconning. Retconning has to change something that was previously established.

The "The Never Before Seen, Lost, Untold tale of Jim and Raynor's Raiders!" is an example of inserting a story where there was previously none. For example, Jim's theft of the Hyperion. It's never really explained in SC1 how Jim acquired the ship, you simply assume that Jim and The Magistrate were already in command of it when they defected from the Sons of Korhal. In SC2 lore, it's explained how Raynor and Matt stole the ship from Mengsk at the Dylarian Shipyards. That's a low-level type of retcon that usually works out fine.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Queen of Blades is a retelling of the SC1 Zerg Campaign to bring it in line of the SC2 version of the StarCraft Universe. So you see the introduction of THE PROPHECY, and they kill off The Cerebrate because he and his ilk were getting in the way of The Plan despite the fact that he survived in the Original campaign and Brood War in the game. It is a retcon because it diverges from the previously established version of events.

Thalraxal wrote:Again, that's a poor analogy. While you've pretty much nailed Mengsk's view of the Zerg, you're missing the fact that you really cannot compare a highly intelligent alien collective to an early attempt at biological warfare. It doesn't even help that Psi Emitters don't even work as advertised: we're not dealing with flies to honey here, we're dealing with "hey look! That signal is *exactly* what we're looking for. Let's check it out!". At which point, the Zerg invade your planet and take it over while scouring the entire thing for that really powerful Terran Psychic they just detected who doesn't actually exist.

I never claimed my analogy was perfect. Your flies analogy is better, I'll give you that.

Still, the fact remaines that the Psi-Emitters worked just as expected: plant one at some place, the Swarm will show up. It was implied the Confederates use one on Mar Sara, and everytime the SoKs used them, it worked just as planned. And we have yet to see such strategy backfiring on the users.

Except the battle was never in space. They likely chose it because 1) the other Tarsonis missions were on Space Platform Terrain (The Big Push, and The Hammer Falls) and they felt it'd tie that series of missions together better and 2) They wanted a more "urban" environment than what Badlands provided or 3) They were sick of badlands terrain since the rest of the campaign used that terrain type.

So, the game itself is no longer an accurate source? Interesting.

But seriously, "Operation Silent Scream" was cut very late during development (the map was 99% done), so the terrain type wasn't the problem. It was because they didn't want the campaign to exceed 10 missions.

I don't see why they couldn't have had "New Gettysburg" planetside in-game.

Eh, Mengsk would have made up some sort of an excuse about how "it had to be done" and "this was the only way" and "they would have done the same to us" and she would have believed him.

Or not. You could tell that she was getting more and more defiant, especially with Raynor to back her up.

Exactly. So why didn't she kill the ones who actually mattered? Oh, right. Because she cared about them on some level or another because she was still Sarah Kerrigan!

I'd say, because she is an insane person who can't think proactively. Here's what she said:

They are of no further use to me. Though they have proven themselves useful, it might be dangerous to allow them to live. Without the services of General Duke, Mengsk will be easy to deal with. But Raynor and Fenix are uncannily resourceful. They must all be eradicated. Cerebrate, I want both General Duke's and Fenix's bases destroyed. Leave no one alive.

Basically, she considered Duke as a bigger threat than Mengsk, despite his almost comical incompetence during the UED campaign. So I guess the former mattered more than the latter.

Her strategic goal was to weaken her enemies, it was something she had to while she had the chance, as Duran pointed out. But she didn't even hit them were it would hurt the most (taking down Jim and Mengsk and effectively ending the Dominion and any chance of the Terrans remaining a united force). She just focused on were it would hurt a lot. Curious, huh?

No, just uncalled-for. Mengsk and Duke deserved to die alright, but what have Raynor and Fenix ever do to her to warrant this? Oh right, because they were "uncannily resourceful", as if a handful of Raiders and Protoss refugees were really a threat to the Swarm.

She didn't really care for them, she was just plain old evil.

Yep. That's what Blizzard promised right there and later on with the conflict between Kerrigan and Zeratul. Between Jim and Zeratul, Kerrigan was on a path for having some sort of a climactic final showdown with the two of them at some point.

Ugh. Back then, I couldn't help but imagine some kind of Final Fantasy-esque duel with the two characters standing on the edge of a volcano with some cheesy rock arrangement playing in the background. For some reason, I'm actually relieved to know it won't be happening.

But joking aside, Raynor swearing revenge is hardly what I would call a promise. I don't remember Blizzard officially stating anything in such regard. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time a character gets to give up on revenge in fiction.

Between developing Terran technology and Protoss technology, I'm pretty sure there would be some sort of reason to hold on to hope. If he really, truely believed that uninfesting her would bring her back to "normal" in Brood War, he'd have reacted differently.

But he didn't know infestation was curable. Even four years later, the genius Ariel Hanson herself didn't believe it was possible. And considering we never got to see her actually curing anyone (although we can see her get horribly mutated herself), we have to assume she only managed to come up with a vaccine to prevent further contamination. They didn't know about the Artifact's power at the time.

Also, when Kerrigan contacted Raynor, she basically told him that, now that the Overmind was dead, she was back to her old self, but could only remain that way by preventing the birth of another Overmind. Being no expert in infestation, Jimmy believed that.

Like you said, "[t]o Jim at that time, Kerrigan was still Kerrigan, she'd just embraced the darker side of her personality and there was nothing he could do about it." However, he was ultimately proven wrong by Valerian.

Again, you don't see Kerrigan and Infested Kerrigan being treated as two different people until Wing of Liberty. That's a new development.

But not a retcon.

Artanis being The Executor is an SC2 retcon, not Brood War, Johnny.

Could you stop calling me "Johnny"? It sounds condescending.

The Executor was still the Player Character from Episode III at the time. Duran, the UED, Shakuras, and Braxis were new developments in areas that were not previously explored (we really didn't know much about what the Dark Templar were up to after their exile from Auir, and the UPL plot cuts off after the Terrans are exiled from Earth). There's a difference between worldbuilding and retconning. Retconning has to change something that was previously established.

Except it never was established that BW's Executor was supposed to be the same Executor from Episode III. The only background they gave us regarding the character was that he/she was "the Executor of the remaining Protoss forces".

However, it was already hinted back then that Artanis was indeed the original Executor, considering his relative inexperience as a commander, his admiration for Tassadar and his concern for Fenix. BW kept it vague, but SC2 cleared that up.

So it's more worldbuilding than retconning.

The "The Never Before Seen, Lost, Untold tale of Jim and Raynor's Raiders!" is an example of inserting a story where there was previously none. For example, Jim's theft of the Hyperion. It's never really explained in SC1 how Jim acquired the ship, you simply assume that Jim and The Magistrate were already in command of it when they defected from the Sons of Korhal. In SC2 lore, it's explained how Raynor and Matt stole the ship from Mengsk at the Dylarian Shipyards. That's a low-level type of retcon that usually works out fine.

The theft at the Dylarian Shipyards is only mentioned in the books. In WoL, Raynor just said they took it from Mengsk, somehow.

I really don't think that's the case, Johnny, since SC2 considers Liberty's Crusade and Queen of Blades to be the more accurate accounts of what happened in the events covered in SC1.

How so? Save for Matt Horner (which was Blizzard's idea, anyway) and Michael Liberty's lightning-fast cameo (his name is never mentioned, however), there's no evidence of that.

Thalraxal wrote:Again, that's a poor analogy. While you've pretty much nailed Mengsk's view of the Zerg, you're missing the fact that you really cannot compare a highly intelligent alien collective to an early attempt at biological warfare. It doesn't even help that Psi Emitters don't even work as advertised: we're not dealing with flies to honey here, we're dealing with "hey look! That signal is *exactly* what we're looking for. Let's check it out!". At which point, the Zerg invade your planet and take it over while scouring the entire thing for that really powerful Terran Psychic they just detected who doesn't actually exist.

I never claimed my analogy was perfect. Your flies analogy is better, I'll give you that.

Still, the fact remaines that the Psi-Emitters worked just as expected: plant one at some place, the Swarm will show up. It was implied the Confederates use one on Mar Sara, and everytime the SoKs used them, it worked just as planned. And we have yet to see such strategy backfiring on the users.

You're still messing with an unknown intelligence, and you still can't get rid of them once they move in. It's like luring your annoying next door neighbour over with fresh cookies AND HE NEVER LEAVES. And he eats all your cookies.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Except the battle was never in space. They likely chose it because 1) the other Tarsonis missions were on Space Platform Terrain (The Big Push, and The Hammer Falls) and they felt it'd tie that series of missions together better and 2) They wanted a more "urban" environment than what Badlands provided or 3) They were sick of badlands terrain since the rest of the campaign used that terrain type.

So, the game itself is no longer an accurate source? Interesting.

But seriously, "Operation Silent Scream" was cut very late during development (the map was 99% done), so the terrain type wasn't the problem. It was because they didn't want the campaign to exceed 10 missions.

I don't see why they couldn't have had "New Gettysburg" planetside in-game.

This is something we'll never really know. They're pretty inconsistent when it comes to terrain types for Tarsonis anyway. In the original campaigns, they used Badlands (Operation Silent Scream), Space Platform (New Gettysburg) and Jungle (whatever the first Zerg mission is called. Among the Ruins, I think.) to represent Tarsonis on seperate occasions.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Eh, Mengsk would have made up some sort of an excuse about how "it had to be done" and "this was the only way" and "they would have done the same to us" and she would have believed him.

Or not. You could tell that she was getting more and more defiant, especially with Raynor to back her up.

I don't see that. She still put her life on the line at New Gettysburg to protect the Zerg for Mengsk, and she still reached out for him while in the Chrysalis. She still had faith in him, and it'd take a bit more than wanting to rule the sector or see it burnt to ashes around him to make her waiver in that.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Exactly. So why didn't she kill the ones who actually mattered? Oh, right. Because she cared about them on some level or another because she was still Sarah Kerrigan!

I'd say, because she is an insane person who can't think proactively. Here's what she said:

They are of no further use to me. Though they have proven themselves useful, it might be dangerous to allow them to live. Without the services of General Duke, Mengsk will be easy to deal with. But Raynor and Fenix are uncannily resourceful. They must all be eradicated. Cerebrate, I want both General Duke's and Fenix's bases destroyed. Leave no one alive.

Basically, she considered Duke as a bigger threat than Mengsk, despite his almost comical incompetence during the UED campaign. So I guess the former mattered more than the latter.

You're also taking that out of context. It was Duran who suggested they betray their allies at that point in time, Kerrigan just conceeded to his point, and went in half-heartedly.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Her strategic goal was to weaken her enemies, it was something she had to while she had the chance, as Duran pointed out. But she didn't even hit them were it would hurt the most (taking down Jim and Mengsk and effectively ending the Dominion and any chance of the Terrans remaining a united force). She just focused on were it would hurt a lot. Curious, huh?

No, just uncalled-for. Mengsk and Duke deserved to die alright, but what have Raynor and Fenix ever do to her to warrant this? Oh right, because they were "uncannily resourceful", as if a handful of Raiders and Protoss refugees were really a threat to the Swarm.

She didn't really care for them, she was just plain old evil.

I never said Kerrigan wasn't a jerk after being infested, just that she wasn't originally intended to be brainwashed or mindcontrolled or influenced by an outside presence like SC2 implies. The point still stands though: she chose to kill people important to people she once cared about (and probably on some level still did), but not those people themselves.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Yep. That's what Blizzard promised right there and later on with the conflict between Kerrigan and Zeratul. Between Jim and Zeratul, Kerrigan was on a path for having some sort of a climactic final showdown with the two of them at some point.

Ugh. Back then, I couldn't help but imagine some kind of Final Fantasy-esque duel with the two characters standing on the edge of a volcano with some cheesy rock arrangement playing in the background. For some reason, I'm actually relieved to know it won't be happening.

But joking aside, Raynor swearing revenge is hardly what I would call a promise. I don't remember Blizzard officially stating anything in such regard. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time a character gets to give up on revenge in fiction.

Whenever you write something, you establish certain expectations. These are often in the form of promises to the reader. If you foreshadow some future event, you've just made a promise that that future event will happen. By having Jim and Zeratul promise to kill Kerrigan, who'd already become a rather unsympathetic character by that point, and somehow actually managed to make people feel bad about killing Duke, you've made a promise to the player that "hey, you'll get that chance too!".

johnnythewolf wrote:

Between developing Terran technology and Protoss technology, I'm pretty sure there would be some sort of reason to hold on to hope. If he really, truely believed that uninfesting her would bring her back to "normal" in Brood War, he'd have reacted differently.

But he didn't know infestation was curable. Even four years later, the genius Ariel Hanson herself didn't believe it was possible. And considering we never got to see her actually curing anyone (although we can see her get horribly mutated herself), we have to assume she only managed to come up with a vaccine to prevent further contamination. They didn't know about the Artifact's power at the time.

Actually, I don't think Hanson ever develops anything during the campaign. Dr. Hanson's smart, but not a genius. She's just the average, Zerg-infested backwater colony doctor. Still, though, it's pretty clearly established that Terran science is insufficient for reversing Zerg infestation at this stage, but that's also after four years of research into that. I'm pretty sure that following first contact with the Zerg, Terran scientists were a bit more confident about it. If there was any time to believe that there was a way to "cure" Kerrigan, it was then.

johnnythewolf wrote:Also, when Kerrigan contacted Raynor, she basically told him that, now that the Overmind was dead, she was back to her old self, but could only remain that way by preventing the birth of another Overmind. Being no expert in infestation, Jimmy believed that.

Of course he believed that, because it was true. It's not Jim's fault for underestimating the lengths she'd go to in order to ensure that she remained incharge of everything. Its her primary motivation: she's been used as a tool, treated as expendable, and thrown away by her former leaders. She has no desire to be subordinate to anyone ever again. That's why she killed off Duke to weaken the Dominion, and killed Fenix to cripple the Raiders. It's her primary character motivation throughout all of Brood War, it's why she wants to be the Queen Bitch of the Universe. That's why its a massive retcon to say that she wasn't in control of her actions, because it makes all of Brood War pointless.

johnnythewolf wrote:Like you said, "[t]o Jim at that time, Kerrigan was still Kerrigan, she'd just embraced the darker side of her personality and there was nothing he could do about it." However, he was ultimately proven wrong by Valerian

No, at that time Jim saw Kerrigan as two people: Good Human Kerrigan and Evil Zerg Kerrigan. That's because it's in SC2 and they retconned that, not because Valerian proved him wrong.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Again, you don't see Kerrigan and Infested Kerrigan being treated as two different people until Wing of Liberty. That's a new development.

But not a retcon.

I'd certainly see it as a retcon. It could have been a shift in how other characters see her, which is in turn how we see her, which may or may not be the truth. But in order for some of the characters involved to feel that way, they'd have to have had their views on the issue changed substantially from what was in SC1. Hence, retcon.

johnnythewolf wrote:

Artanis being The Executor is an SC2 retcon, not Brood War, Johnny.

Could you stop calling me "Johnny"? It sounds condescending.

But it's your name. What else am I going to call you? Very well then, from here on out, I shall simply call you... THE WOLF.

johnnythewolf wrote:

The Executor was still the Player Character from Episode III at the time. Duran, the UED, Shakuras, and Braxis were new developments in areas that were not previously explored (we really didn't know much about what the Dark Templar were up to after their exile from Auir, and the UPL plot cuts off after the Terrans are exiled from Earth). There's a difference between worldbuilding and retconning. Retconning has to change something that was previously established.

Except it never was established that BW's Executor was supposed to be the same Executor from Episode III. The only background they gave us regarding the character was that he/she was "the Executor of the remaining Protoss forces".

However, it was already hinted back then that Artanis was indeed the original Executor, considering his relative inexperience as a commander, his admiration for Tassadar and his concern for Fenix. BW kept it vague, but SC2 cleared that up.

So it's more worldbuilding than retconning.

Nope. It wasn't "vague" in Brood War, it was pretty clearly not the case. It's pretty clearly established that The Executor is always the same character in SC1. Since they chose to do away with all player characters (The Magistrate, The Cerebrate, The Executor and The Captain), they had to establish new characters or merge them with pre-existing characters were it actually mattered. So Jim gets credit for everything that the Magistrate did, while Artanis gets credit for everything The Executor did. I've got no issues with it, Blizzard's been doing this since WC1 where they retconned the unnamed player character into Lothar and Orgrim Doomhammer, but it's still a retcon.

johnnythewolf wrote:

The "The Never Before Seen, Lost, Untold tale of Jim and Raynor's Raiders!" is an example of inserting a story where there was previously none. For example, Jim's theft of the Hyperion. It's never really explained in SC1 how Jim acquired the ship, you simply assume that Jim and The Magistrate were already in command of it when they defected from the Sons of Korhal. In SC2 lore, it's explained how Raynor and Matt stole the ship from Mengsk at the Dylarian Shipyards. That's a low-level type of retcon that usually works out fine.

The theft at the Dylarian Shipyards is only mentioned in the books. In WoL, Raynor just said they took it from Mengsk, somehow.

Exactly, The Wolf.

johnnythewolf wrote:

I really don't think that's the case, Johnny, since SC2 considers Liberty's Crusade and Queen of Blades to be the more accurate accounts of what happened in the events covered in SC1.

How so? Save for Matt Horner (which was Blizzard's idea, anyway) and Michael Liberty's lightning-fast cameo (his name is never mentioned, however), there's no evidence of that.

Again, game canon takes precedence until proven otherwise.

It's been proven otherwise, The Wolf. The novelization are canon for SC2, not SC1. Game canon only trumps novel canon whenever its the new game, not the old game.

I'm not sure about the rest of the things, as I don't read SC novels, but Artanis being the Executor is a blatant retcon.

In BW Aldaris addresses you, the player, and introduces Artanis - a PRAETOR - to you. He is referred to as Praetor through the rest of the campaign, and all other characters refer to you, the player, as Executor. This is a clear retcon, like Doomhammer vs Lothar in Warcraft 2 was: in the game you clearly see Lothar getting ambushed while in a diplomatic meeting with Doomhammer, but it was retconned so that Doomhammer defeated Lothar in a honorable battle.

We don't know if the player character is the same Executor in both Protoss campaigns (same for the Cerebrate) but these characters were there and they took part in the events. The Executor of the original campaigns HAS to be someone other than Artanis, otherwise Artanis is just talking to himself all the time.

Introducing the prophecy to past events isn't retconning, it's expanding. But changing how things happened is a retcon.

Oh, and last but not least, characters changing their behavior over time isn't retconning, it's character development. It may be bad development sometimes, and it may be illogical or very inconsistent, but it's still not retconning, IMO.

Explaining how I see it, as an example (I'm making some of these things up just to try to show how I view it):Canon event: Raynor swears to kill Kerrigan.Retconning: the game states that Raynor never sworn to kill Kerrigan at all. This directly contradicts what the player experienced.Character development: Raynor changes his mind about it. This may be subject to inconsistencies, plot hole or may be good character development, but it's not a retcon.Character development that looks like a retcon but isn't: Raynor says that he never sworn to kill Kerrigan at all.In this case Raynor is simply lying, or he forgot about it, but it still isn't a retcon.

Meta wrote:Explaining how I see it, as an example (I'm making some of these things up just to try to show how I view it):Canon event: Raynor swears to kill Kerrigan.Retconning: the game states that Raynor never sworn to kill Kerrigan at all. This directly contradicts what the player experienced.Character development: Raynor changes his mind about it. This may be subject to inconsistencies, plot hole or may be good character development, but it's not a retcon.Character development that looks like a retcon but isn't: Raynor says that he never sworn to kill Kerrigan at all.In this case Raynor is simply lying, or he forgot about it, but it still isn't a retcon.

That and removing Fenix, by pretending he never existed in the first place. This, along with the 'good' Zerg story, went on my black list of unforgivable retconns, a thing I've repeated more than once and I'll KEEP ON repeating.

EVEN Raszagal, who was a minor character, had a reference to her, through Zeratul's ingame quote, but Fenix had NONE of it. Him and Aldaris.

Problem was, creativity went on dead for Blizzard. Simple as that. They knew that Raynor killing Kerrigan would leave a serious void on the storyline, so they went the simple path, 'let's pulverize Fenix off the Starcraft lore.'

Same thing with the Overmind. The reason? They need room open for a Starcraft MMO.

Except Fenix hasn't been retconned out of existence; last time I checked, he's still mentioned in SC2's online manual (i.e. Braxis's description). Blizzard may have been indeed minimizing his role (which wasn't much to being with) but ultimately chose not to mention him in-game because he wasn't needed by the Terran-centric plot.

As for the Overmind, all Tassadar did was to reckon it had "courage". He still acknowledged him as an abomination.

johnnythewolf wrote:Except Fenix hasn't been retconned out of existence; last time I checked, he's still mentioned in SC2's online manual (i.e. Braxis's description). Blizzard may have been indeed minimizing his role (which wasn't much to being with) but ultimately chose not to mention him in-game because he wasn't needed by the Terran-centric plot.

Yeah, Blizzard seemed to minimize the roles of nearly everyone who died in SC1 and whose legacy didn't extend past BW. But I don't think these are retcons unless they downright state that these characters never existed in the first place, or if you develop your (surviving) characters in a direction that specifically doesn't need Fenix or Duke, for example. It'd have been cool to feature an anti-Zerg dominion billboard with Duke's photo and a message saying "we will never forget" or something like that.

A stranger omission is the UED: you'd think that a massive army of quasi-Nazi Terran invaders that, for a while, overran both the Zerg and the Dominion would have had a bigger legacy, or at least be mentioned by the Koprulu citizens.

Colossi sleeping under the water peacefully while the rest of Aiur gets massacred

Reeks of retconning, but since their existence isn't acknowledged until SC2, I'm not quite sure. I believe we can all agree that it's just stupid to feature "secret weapons of mass destruction" that just remain hidden and aren't even hinted at when Aiur is being overrun by aliens bent on infesting the entire planet, and then conveniently awaken these weapons later on in a minor assignment that isn't even meant to draw enemy attention in the first place.

Hunter_Killers wrote:You know I think I'm more interested in buying HoS/LotV at this point just to see how badly they screw everything else up.

Pretty much. But hey, at least we might get some cool units and tilesets to play with.

If you're talking about that 'snow' tileset thing, I must remind there was one already in the SC II editor, named 'Nifleheim' (Something like that, I'm not sure), scrapped but seemed like Blizzard forgot to take that one out. There are even tutorials in YouTube and SC2Mapster.com teaching how do access them, replacing them, of course, with the existing tilesets.

However, I won't deny the possibilities of new terrains for HotS and LotV. If there are Swamp tilesets, like the ones the guys of the dead Sons of War project once tried to do, that'll be an advance. I also hope there are alien installation interiors instead of just Terrans. Even interiors of the Zerg Hives are not excluded from the possibilities.

For units, TBH, I don't expect new ones, only that the three primary ones that mattered come back, at least for single-player: Lurkers, Devourers and Defilers. God and Code know how much a more useful spellcaster is needed for the Zerg instead of just the Infestor...

Falchion wrote:For units, TBH, I don't expect new ones, only that the three primary ones that mattered come back, at least for single-player: Lurkers, Devourers and Defilers. God and Code know how much a more useful spellcaster is needed for the Zerg instead of just the Infestor...

People actually feared seeing a Defiler. It was like giving your opponent the finger.

Back when I still played, using the Infestor was more like screwing with somebody. It didn't have nearly the same presence to it.